It's barmy business

The Corporation - a fully fledged psychopath.
Nina Caplan|Metro10 April 2012
Nina Caplan

**** The Corporation Metrodome Distribution, PG, £19.99

It's hardly frontpage news that corporations are greedy, grasping, selfish and insensitive but it may be new to many that, as well as possessing these human traits, they're also actually human - legally speaking, anyway.

In The Corporation, Canadian film-makers Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar don't just blame this legal loophole for the carnage big business is currently wreaking on our social structure; they go one step further and ask, if a corporation were a person, what kind of person would it be?

Their psychoanalytic profile is funny, scary and informative, helped along by top-notch talking heads such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and of course, the omnipresent (but still valid) Michael Moore. The upshot (and I'm not giving anything away here) is that evaluated psychoanalytically, your average corporation is a fully fledged psychopath.

Extras: Deleted scenes, director Q&As and leftie film star Janeane Garofalo interviewing the film's writer, Joel Bakan, on Air America.

*** Layer Cake Columbia Tristar Home Video, 15, £22.99

Matthew Vaughn, Guy Ritchie's producer, apparently hankered after the director's chair and, when Mr Madge turned his nose up at Layer Cake, he grabbed his chance. Daniel Craig, suave and wellspoken, is an upstanding young drug dealer trying, like any trader, to get out while he's ahead.

Big boss Michael Gambon, however, has other ideas. It's not what you'd call an original plotline but Vaughn skates cheerily along its surface; his spiky drugs 'n' guns set-up manages to make the point that in London, drugs, crims and ordinary Joes are layered together like a Victoria sponge cake but he makes that premise feel about as scary as, well, afternoon tea.

Extras: Interviews with Vaughn and Craig, deleted scenes and alternative endings.

*** Platinum Blonde 4 Front Video, U, £5.99

Jean Harlow, the original Platinum Blonde, died too young to be much remembered now, although Gwen Stefani playing her as Howard Hughes's arm-candy in The Aviator may have upped her name recognition a little.

In this 1931 Frank Capra film, she's a silver-plated heiress whose metallic tresses have won journo Robert Williams. As the spoilt babe and the crusty newshound attempt to settle down together, they find that love doesn't conquer all: he has blithely assumed she'll adapt to his life and she's determined he'll morph into a rich bitch.

Meanwhile, moping in the background, there's Williams's fellow hack Loretta Young, who truly loves him - and perhaps more importantly, has no butlers to compromise his masculinity. Vintage Jazz Age fun.

Extras: None.

*** Moonlight And Valentino MGM Home Entertainment, 15, £12.99

Elizabeth Perkins of The Flintstones and Big, er, fame stars in the 1995 chick flick Moonlight And Valentino as Rebecca, whose husband is killed in a jogging accident.

Her sister (a very young Gwyneth Paltrow), her best friend (Whoopi Goldberg) and her bolshy former stepmother (Kathleen Turner) join forces to try to help her through her grief and the result is a sweet, if low-key, adaptation by Ellen Simon of her stage play.

Despite the all-star cast, with Jon Bon Jovi making his film debut, it's not hard to see why this was never a big hit; the subject matter is hard work and the action takes a long time to kick in. But Goldberg is always good when she plays it straight, Paltrow's talent was obvious even back then and Perkins is one of those terrific actresses whose slightly offbeat look, rather than any lack of ability, prevented her from hitting the fame jackpot.

Extras: None.

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